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Friday, 20 March 2015

Adrenaline junkies in the family? Throw them off a cliff!

The poor old Teenager. Half-term and he was being made to go on holiday. With his FAMILY. To Cornwall. OUT OF SEASON. And stay in a CARAVAN. He was not impressed.

A part of me did feel for him. But at 15-years-old, we could hardly leave him home alone or send him clubbing in Ibiza with a bunch of lads. Not quite yet.

To go some way towards compensation, I decided to organize a surprise for him for the last day of the holiday. A treat that would feed his sensation-seeking nature: a ride on the 490m long, 40 mph zip wire at Adrenalin Quarry.

As we took the turn off and drove up the steep, gravelly hill, he jerked out his earphones, jolted upright and stammered, “W-w-what you doing? I thought we were going back to the caravan.” He’d been looking forward to caving up in his cupboard of a bedroom and getting some non-family time, clearly.

The signs gave him all the clues he needed.

He perked up immediately and shot out the car ahead of us to go and survey the scene. Oh yes. Suitably scarey. Suitably teenage.

His eyes went all shiny and he became that sweet, babbly, see-through, little 5-year-old boy who used to get excited about going on a double-decker bus. Then completely unexpected and completely out-of-character, a little voice piped up: “Can I do it too?”

I turned to look at my 8-year-old daughter. My protective, motherly instincts kicked in hard, in the pit of my stomach, and every bone in my body screamed “Nooooo!” I couldn't possibly send this little dot of a thing out into that abyss. Alone. Far away from me. Into the distance. Connected to a wire by a small metal clip.

But I mustn’t project my fears onto her. “Of course you can. Great!" I said in the most confident voice I could muster. "I’m really impressed that you want to do it!”

“I put a 3-year-old down there yesterday,” said the girl at reception reassuringly, as if reading my mind. “And they loved it. No-one’s ever come back and said they didn’t’ like it!”

Come back? Yes, hang on a minute: Where exactly was I sending her? What was at the other end of the zip wire? Because you sure as hell couldn’t see it from here. “Oh, it’s just a five minute walk,” said the girl.

So my son and daughter stepped up to what looked hauntingly like the gallows. To the man – who with his hood up in the rain – looked hauntingly like the hangman.

The first thing was for them to be weighed and harnessed up. The woman in charge of this was quite a character. “I’m really good at doing tight harnesses,” she said proudly, pulling eye-wateringly hard at the straps round my son’s groin. “I made someone cry once.” Then she attended to my daughter. “It might give you a bit of a wedgie,” she laughed.

And now they were ready to step forward to The Edge. They were going to travel side by side on parallel lines, which I took some comfort in. My son’s face was openly happy and nervous, in equal measures.

Finally, the man attached a barrel of water for my daughter to sit on to add weight to her. Then he turned to me: “Last words?” I wanted to blurt out: I love you more than you'll ever know, you’re the most precious thing in the whole wide world, if I never see you again ... “Enjoy it!” I said.

“North line, 75 kilo. South line, 25 kilo, barrel-assisted” said the man through the walkie-talkie to the person at the other end of the zip wire who was going to receive them, as if describing cargo rather than human life.

And they jumped.

Within seconds, she was indeed a little dot. Another few seconds, invisible. I hoped the person who caught her the other end would be warm and kind and welcome her with a big cuddle and a mug of steaming cocoa.

While I waited for them to come back, I distracted myself watching other lunatics being launched on the giant swing. Good grief. I'd rather have six fillings in one go with no anaesthetic.

Son and daughter both returned grinning from ear to ear. “What do you give it out of 10?” I asked my daughter. "9 ¾." She said it lost a quarter of a point because of the drizzle which made her close her eyes most of the way. (What??? You went through all that and you didn’t even look?!).

“I think the rain kind of added to it,” said the Teenager. He was chatty and cheerful for at least half an hour.

Hello!

I'm Claire Potter, author of the Little Blighters books for parents and freelance writer for The Guardian. I am always on the look out for mini-adventures and (good) mischief I can get up to with my children. The quirkier, the better! I hope you find inspiration here for refreshingly different days out, and in, or just ideas to add a bit of quirkle to everyday life with your children.

Take a peek at my books ...

and ...

"When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: A stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY." &nbsp (Roald Dahl)